


Harmony

by hirusen



Series: Entangled Union [1]
Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Ending - Cyberpunk 2077, Anxiety Attacks, Bisexual Johnny Silverhand, Comfort, Corpo Tech, Cyberpunk 2077 Slang, Friendship/Love, Gen, Holding Hands, Inappropriate Humor, Language, Medical Procedures, Neither Does Johnny, Original Corpo Character, Plushies, Soft Johnny Silverhand, Street Kid V (Cyberpunk 2077), Tags Are Hard, V doesn't die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:49:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28892418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hirusen/pseuds/hirusen
Summary: "And you're sure this will work?" "V, when has my tech ever failed?"
Relationships: Johnny Silverhand & Male V, Male V (Cyberpunk 2077) & Original Female Character
Series: Entangled Union [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2118873
Kudos: 19





	Harmony

**Author's Note:**

> Apologizes in advance if Johnny doesn't feel quite right.

V collapsed onto his bed and half fell off of it, but he didn't really fucking care.

He was tired. He was _**dying**_. His last job got botched thanks to some random idiot. He's been shot at, and two of them hit--nothing vital, thankfully. He had to brawl his way out because of a stupid little oversight about how much ammo he had on him. He's bruised and sore.

And did he mention he was dying?

"You look like absolute shit, kid." Johnny's kind words greeted him after a moment and he kindly flipped him the bird. He didn't have to look to know that little smirk was pulling on Johnny's lips; happens when you've been together for as long as they have, which was a lot longer than Misty and Viktor originally thought after they put the chip that had Johnny in it in his skull. "You wanna just order-in for the night, V?" "Nah. I just need a nap. Wake me?" V asked as he properly climbed into his bed, yanking off his boots and throwing them towards his closet, catching a glimpse of Johnny making his way from the window to the couch, splaying himself out over it as V finally settled down himself.

"Usual time?" V hummed and started to drift to sleep before Johnny even replied. "Alright. Get some rest, Samurai."

* * *

V was awaken to a hand gently shaking his shoulder and a soft whistle coming from above him. "If I have to rip a power cord into your ear, I will." "Please no. The last time you did that, I had a headache that lasted for two days; you bitched about it like crazy." It was still something the two of them were getting used to, being able to touch each other; sure, their first proper introduction to each other is something neither of them can really forget, but it wasn't like Johnny or V went out of their way to physically interact with each other.

...Well, outside of the one time in private that V played with Johnny's hair for a moment. He was promptly slapped in the face for it, but still worth it for the look of confused fluster on Johnny's face. And, in all fairness, Johnny's hair is softer than it looks.

V sat up and scooted to the edge of the bed, stretching with a yawn before glancing out of the window. It was officially nighttime in Night City, which was a rather dangerous time to be going out, but then when wasn't it? "So, where we headed?" "I was thinking Little China." "Really?" That surprised Johnny. Normally, V would head to one of the piers and get something there after a botched job. "Really. Felt like spoiling myself a little." And that meant cheap booze and shitty Chinese food from a street vendor. "...Fine, but you don't get to bitch later." "I've still got that migraine shit, right?" Johnny flickered away for a moment, before striding back into view from the direction of the bathroom.

"Not a lot left, but yeah." "It'll do."

So they were off to their destination, making small talk here and there about things they saw or from their last conversation. Johnny was grateful that V decided to hit up a bar this time instead of the vendors, smiling at how V's shoulders slumped a little more now that there was a crowd and some half decent cover. Silverhand wonders whether V's unease with less chances to hide or take cover comes from him, or his life growing up as a street kid. Could also be because V's got too much of a gentle soul and being a merc is slowly breaking him. He knows it's a combination of V's natural survival instincts and several miracles that the kid even lived long enough to become an adult.

V had barely sat down at the bar when, "V? Is that you?" A female voice called from behind him and he turned, eyes going wide at what he saw.

Or rather who.

"Blythe? What are you doing in these neck of the woods?" V didn't let it show, but he got a little worried as Johnny visibly tensed as Blythe approached.

She was still wearing her corpo suit after all.

"You're friends with a corporat, V?" Johnny hissed in his ear, but he ignored him for now, welcoming Blythe with a smile and a hug. "I got so worried about you when I recieved news of a brake-in at one of the buildings." "Oh, that's right you worked for them before you went independent, right?" "Still have a lot of their software that they don't want me to have, but it was part of the deal they signed when letting me go, so there isn't shit that they can do about it." She wore a rather proudly smug look at those words, but Johnny would let it go for now.

"You still haven't answered my question, Bly." She sighed. "Corporate Plaza, this address." She pushed a piece of paper into V's palm. "You'll have to give me the full details once you get there." She then snapped around and left. "Wait, Blythe!" But she didn't stop. V glanced down at the address on the scrap of paper, committing it to memory, then heading out himself after tossing it.

Of course, once V reached a place where no one was around, Johnny shoved him into an empty alleyway. "You can't be serious, V. You're really gonna trust that corpo bitch?" "Yes I am, Johnny." "Why? What fucking reason do you have to allow me to even let you go to that place?" Johnny did make it aware that he can take over V on very rare occasions without the pill and without V on the verge of death, so that was a real threat. But V had a reason.

"She's the reason I lived as a kid!" Johnny went still, so V went on. "Did I get some tech in me when I was little, yeah. Did it nearly get me killed because the bastard who put it in didn't know jack about what he was doin'? Also yeah. But Blythe saved my life. She and her folks may be corpo dogs, but Blythe detested the life she lived, so she lived like I did: out on the streets. Her tech was the best we had back then, and it was because of that that I even lived when the shit in me started to fry my nerves." "So why did she go back?" "Family persuaded her to. But we've kept in touch pretty regularly; when I tried to make a life outside of Night City, she was the one who helped me out."

Johnny growled softly under his breath, a hand shoving through his hair as the mulled things over. "...Fine, we'll see what she wants, but if things start to go south, I'm taking over and getting out of there, understood?" "Got it. And, Johnny?" He glanced over his shoulder to V, his eyes just visible over the edge of his aviators. "Thank you."

* * *

For a corpo woman, Johnny will admit that she certainly doesn't live like one. In fact, her place looked like it belonged to a middle class family back in the early 2000's. "I'm sorry to have just told you to come here without explaining, but there were other corporation members in that bar and I didn't want them to overhear." Blythe spoke as she entered the living room, having changed into loose leggings and tank-top. "Damn. You think she'll let you motorboat those?" Johnny asked and V couldn't contain his sputtered laugh.

"...I thought so. I had a feeling the relic contained him, but I never had a chance to actually check." V's small giggle fit ended instantly at her words. "What do you mean?" "Johnny Silverhand is living in your head, and as a side effect of that he's slowly killing you." V felt his blood go cold. "...Am I wrong?" And for the first time, V finally saw the corpo side of Blythe: she was stone faced, eyes locked dead with his, shoulders tense yet hands relaxed. She looked like a viper ready to strike and V felt Johnny's metal hand slip onto the back of his neck; it was his signal that he was too nervous about the situation, but didn't want to risk taking over.

"...No, you aren't." Blythe's whole body slumped, expression turning mournful, as she waved V closer. Her hands cupped his face once he was close enough, thumbs gently stroking under V's eyes. "Sit down, and tell me every thing. Leave nothing out, V."

* * *

"And that's everything until we met again at the bar." "I see..." Blythe hooked a leg over her thigh as she leaned back in thought. "Follow me." She stated as she stood, waiting for V to stand before leading him towards a room in the back of the house. Inside looked like a ripper shop, seat and all. "This what she does for fun?" "What is all of this, Bly?" "An upgrade of my setup back when we were kids." She smiled softly then, gesturing towards the chair, which V took after a moment's hesitation. "I'm going to link you up to a diagnostic system, which is going to read the chip that contains Johnny." "Why is she gonna do that?" "Johnny wants to know why you're doing that?"

"If I can get a full read of the chip containing him--it won't make a copy of him, it's just reading the pure data--then I can figure out where the harmful pieces are and isolate them." V's hands suddenly balled into tight fists, and Johnny reacted quickly. "It's alright, V. Breathe." "But--" "Breathe. Focus. I need you to just focus on your breathing for a minute, can do you that?" Johnny's voice was soft, his flesh hand tenderly following up and down the length of V's spine as the kid nodded his head. "Remember what I told you?" "4 in, hold 5, out 8." "Can you try to do that for me right now?"

For not knowing anything about Johnny's side of the conversation, Blythe stayed quiet, Johnny seeing out of the corner of his eye that she was moving, but he needed to keep his attention on V. Blythe's hand gently settled onto one of V's, the man snapping a vice grip onto it, but despite the clear marks V was leaving behind, she lifted her hand--and thus his--up a little and Johnny glanced away from V to see as his hand was carefully being wrapped around a teddy bear plushy. A moment later, Johnny felt the phantom softness of the plushy and that, combined with the slow breathing Johnny had V doing, his anxiety vanished.

It's the only part of V that Johnny can't fully feel. Yes, he can feel that V's suffering an attack, but he's not really affected by it; depending on the intensity of the attack, he'll feel his heart beat a little faster and his ribs tighten a little, but that's all he feels. He won't admit it, but watching V go through one of his anxiety attacks hurts only because he can't fully understand what the kid's going through so he doesn't always know how to help him.

V cradled the plushy in his palms, rocking a little bit to work himself through the last of the attack. "Sorry." "No, it's my fault. I shouldn't have worded it like that." Blythe said, taking the rolling stool and scooting over to V's side. "What I plan to do isn't going to hurt you, or Johnny." "What will it do?" "Save you." Both men before Blythe were stunned.

"Remember back when we were kids and your nerves started to fry when the tech seemed to go bad?" V nodded. It's not like he could ever forget it. "I had kept that data and researched further into it. V, you actually have an extremely rare medical condition that, basically put, can once in a blue moon reject any tech put in you." V cocked a brow in confusion. "It's like being deathly allergic to something, but only once every 50000th time you've eaten it; it's so rare that it doesn't have an official medical name yet, since there's only been 3 recorded cases of this, you being 4."

"So, what happened back when we were kids was that?" "That, and a ripper that couldn't rip his own meat if he tried." Ok, that got a laugh out of both V and Johnny. "Ok, I'll admit, I'm starting to like her." V glanced over to Johnny and smiled. "...How long will the diagnostic take?" "About twenty minutes." She then hooked a cable into the nape of V's neck; Johnny felt a weird tingle run down his spine as the program began reading the chip. "You're free to move around the room, just don't let the cable get dislodged, or we'll have to start over again."

* * *

It was a boringly long twenty minutes.

V had spent most of that time clutching the plushy in his palms. Procedures like this made the guy nervous, so his anxiety spikes a little, but it's nothing that he hasn't handled in the past before. It helps that Johnny sat right next to him and spent the entire twenty minutes rubbing a hand against his back or shoulders.

Blythe returned right as the diagnose was complete, settling a plate with a sandwich and apple slices onto V's lap as she took the stool again and began reading over the jumbled mess of words and numbers that Johnny didn't bother trying to read further. "Blythe?" "Hmm?" "Johnny won't... He won't be in any pain when you do this, right?" She turned to face V, a soft look in her eyes. "He shouldn't, but I can't guarantee that he won't. He is an engram, after all; I'm not sure if he'll feel pain completely independently from you or not." And they have no way to know until she does whatever it is she's going to do. "And you're sure this will work?" "V, when has my tech ever failed?"

V nodded his head in agreement after a moment; her tech saved a lotta lives back when they were young. "Alright. I've found the parts of the code that are causing...well, your death. All I'm going to need you to do is to lie back in the chair and relax as best as you can." Blythe instructed as she took the empty plate away, and then began hooking a few more cables into V, settling his arms into place on the arms of the chair. "The plushy is a little too big for you to hold, but I'm gonna settle him right...there..." V giggled as he felt the soft fabric tickle his neck. "...Would holding a hand be ok?" Johnny perked a little at that, having stepped away to lean against a wall, bracing himself for what's about to happen.

"Yes it would be." V opened his mouth to speak, but closed it as he felt Johnny's fingers curl around his own. Glancing over he saw the little smile on the rocker-boy's mouth, his aviators off and nestled on his shirt. "I'm right here, V. You're doing good." Johnny praised and watched as V sunk a little further into the chair. "Ok. Take a steady, slow breath for me, V." Doing as instructed, he felt a short flare in the base of his skull as he let out the breath, listening as Blythe began her thunderously fast typing. "Just breathe nice and steady until I remove the cables, ok?" "Ok."

* * *

A full hour.  
A full fucking hour.

That's how long it took Blythe to finish typing. And it was another ten minutes before she removed the cables, but Johnny didn't care. What he cared about was the scared kid who was almost shaking the entire time; cared about the man he held the hand of; cared about how much he trusted Johnny to keep holding his hand, to keep being by his side when he needed him to be.

Why is it in these moments of peril that Johnny realizes he loves someone? He needs to get his head looked at one of these days.

But that can wait, as Blythe does a general test with V before running a full medical diagnostic on him. "Okay. I've got good and possibly bad news depending on how you two take this." V squeezed the plushy while Johnny squeezed his shoulder. "The good news is it worked." She turned the monitor around and showed them a before and after the procedure. "As you two have must likely discovered during your time together, the chip was not only killing V, but slowly turning his body into Johnny's. It was actually these changes that were killing you as your body was trying to reject your mind like it would a failed organ transplant."

Both of them breathed in relief. "Now, the changes already made can't be undone, but they won't progress any further than they have." "...And the bad news?" Blythe sighed. "The only way for me to stop you from dying AND keep anything from happening to Johnny...was to partially merge his code into your biology." "Meaning?" Both V and Johnny said at the same time, though of course Blythe could only hear V. "Meaning no matter what happens with the chip, Johnny will always be in your head. He can't be transferred into a separate body and be his own individual."

Yeah, that was sorta bad news.

"But...wouldn't the merge progress the changes already made in my body?" Blythe shook her head. "The changes were made because the engram of Johnny was trying to take full control over your body; with the code now mixed with your biology, it thinks it succeeded, so it's overriding programs have deactivated." "So... She basically tricked the chip into thinking I've taken full control." Johnny muttered and V let out a breath. "...What about Johnny's ability to take full control? Do I still have to take the pills or is it sorta just whenever he wants to?" "It's both. The pills give you two the most stable transition from you having control to Johnny having control, however, he can now take control of you fully or partially at will **without** you near death."

"Partially?" V asked, his head cocked a little to the side like a puppy. "It means he can take control of just your head, or your hands or arms, things of that nature." "Ah, so I can motorboat her." "Johnny, no." Blythe chuckled at the exchange. "Outside of those changes, everything else is the same." V nodded his head, trying to now wrap his head around the fact that he's no longer dying from the chip.

"Thank you, Bly. I mean it." She smiled warmly to him. "Hey, what are friends for?" "A quick fuck." "Johnny!"


End file.
